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Video: Boy finds wedding rings in toilet

AUSTIN, Texas — An Austin woman has solved her own hit-and-run accident.

Carrie Miller was knocked off her bike by the passenger-side mirror of a car while riding on March 29. The other driver didn’t stop, and the case looked unsolvable.

A piece of plastic bounded off on impact, and Miller picked it up because she thought it might be part of her bike. She realized the next day that it was part of the mirror of the car that hit her.

“I had started to obsess about looking at side-view mirrors on the random chance that I would see it,” she said.

Two days later, Miller was walking up the stairs at her apartment complex when she spotted a car with a broken side mirror. The piece of plastic she took from the scene fit perfectly.

After knocking on a few doors, Miller found the driver of the car — in her own building.

Justin Dloski, 27, was charged with a felony count of failure to stop and render aid. According to his arrest warrant, Dloski told police he thought he hit a squirrel that night but later admitted he hit something larger.

College homework literally pays off
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Two Flagler College students have landed almost a million dollars in grant money for St. Johns County.

As part of a class project about writing grants, Ricky Domingo and Michael Banks learned how to write grant proposals and officially submitted them. Both men are students in the college’s public administration track.

Banks, a 911 emergency systems engineer, secured $850,000 for a new 911 emergency communication system for the county. It will serve as a backup system to the program already in place.

Domingo is a St. Johns County sheriff’s deputy. His grant, awarded by Wal-mart for $1,000, will purchase new tracking bracelets that will help the sheriff’s office locate missing people, such as Alzheimer’s patients or people who are mentally ill.

— WTLV, Jacksonville, Fla.

Snorkeler finds human skull in cauldron
TAMPA BAY, Fla. — While searching for stone crabs, a Florida snorkeler found a human skull inside a clay cauldron in the water last weekend.

Tampa Bay police and scientists from the University of South Florida were working to identify the skull, which was found in Tampa’s Courtney Campbell Causeway.

Several other small bones and teeth were inside the pot, along with two horseshoes and a few other unidentified items, authorities said.

Police divers failed to find any more bones in the area after searching Saturday and Sunday, and it was still unclear whether the skull was related to a crime.

— WTVJ, Miami

Teens set kazoo world record
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — What do you get when you put more than 5,000 teens in one city and hand them a kazoo apiece? The ingredients for a world record.

Fifty-two hundred or so teens were in Salt Lake this week for the Challenge conference put on by the Evangelical Free Church of America. Organizer Jeff Safford wanted to give them something fun to do, which explains the kazoo world record idea.

But will the record make a difference? One girl said yes. “I think it’d be awesome for people to hear that we made a (world) book record for a Christian song made out of kazoos. I think it’s awesome,” she said.

But it’s not all fun and games. “We’re packaging 250,000 meals for kids in the Congo and in Haiti (and) trying to bring in shoes for Nike Raise and Shoot to put together basketball courts for an underprivileged area. This is the fun aspect of being part of something colossal,” Stafford said.

— KSL, Salt Lake City, Utah

Foxhole pillows big hit with troops
FALMOUTH, Maine — Theresa Forestell and Pauline Getchell have been sewing up a storm for the past few months.

They’re making “foxhole” pillows for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It all started when 80-year-old Forestell, an avid computer user, was in her senior chat room online. A soldier from Iraq asked to join the conversation.

“We were so glad,” Forestell said. “The seniors were so glad to talk to him. Everybody had questions for him.”

One questions was what, if anything, he needed. The soldier was quick to tell them he would love to have a small pillow that would fit in his duffel bag so he could use it while on the road in Iraq.

Forestell and Getchell went to work. Thus far, they figure they’ve sent out at least a few hundred pillows to various units.

And they’d like to send out more. They’re hoping to get names and addresses of some Maine soldiers to send the pillows to.

— WCSH, Portland, Maine

Employee suspended over burgundy hair
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — She calls it burgundy, but her employer calls it outrageous.

Meyosha Love, 17, an employee at The Grande movie theatre in Winston-Salem, said she was suspended last weekend after the company said her colored hair didn’t meet company dress code guidelines.

“It’s not blue. It’s not purple. It’s not out of the normal,” said Love, who has worked at the theater for almost two years.

Her new hairstyle is described as 2-inch red tips.

“A lot of people get different colored braids,” Love said. “If I was walking normally down the street you wouldn’t stop and say, ‘Wow, she really has crazy hair!’”

The manager suspended Love for 10 days. Asked about the suspension, the theater provided a copy of the company’s policy, which clearly states that employees’ hair color must “be a color that naturally occurs in nature on humans.”

“I don’t think her definition of natural is fair to me for me to have to lost my job,” Love said.

She said changing the style isn’t an easy option. Braids can take up to nine hours and $200 at a salon.